WhyBike Motorcycle Blog

So today I got a ticket for basically splitting lanes. I live in San Diego and was getting off of the freeway and saw a motorcycle cop in the right lane of the off ramp. There’s a red light and everyone stops and I stop behind a truck, pull to the right (between the lanes) and creep up to the front of traffic. All of a sudden the motorcycle cop pulls up behind me and says to pull over at the next safe spot. He gives me a ticket for “unsafe passing on the right” which is Vehicle Code 21755. Now here’s 21755 as written on the DMV’s web site.

Pass on Right Safely - Vehicle Code 21755The driver of a motor vehicle may overtake and pass another vehicle upon the right only under conditions permitting such movement in safety. In no event shall such movement be made by driving off the paved or main-traveled portion of the roadway.

So what exactly did I do wrong? Nothing, of course. In my experiences so far cops have an agenda against sports bike riders. Now I’ve only been riding for about 4 or 5 months and I ride a 2004 Ninja 500R. I split lanes almost all of the time down here in SoCal. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Unfortunately California’s lane-splitting law is ambiguous and hard to prove that you were traveling in a “safe and prudent” manner. Obviously a cop’s word will always win in court so I guess there is no reason to fight it. The trouble with the lane splitting law is that the biker lobby is so afraid of losing the ability to lane split altogether that nobody wants to touch it. Most bikers will live with the ambiguity, careful to not cause a scene and pay our occasional fines quietly because we know that if we brought it before the people of California they would outlaw it. It is literally fitting that the lane splitting issue, like the action itself has so little margin of error.

It is no secret that cops rarely give out tickets to make the roads a safer place. Traffic tickets are a cash cow for the government and if they really cared about safety they would require a lot more training, fines would be tens of thousands of dollars, and they would strip you of your license on your second moving violation.

So what can you do? You could lay rubber a block long right in front of City Hall. You could do a 70mph wheelie through the police parking lot. But none of these things will change the law, just get you in more trouble; even if they made you feel better in the short term. All I can say is pay your fine, keep splitting, and educate your cager friends about lane-splitting. Make them understand why we do it and how it actually SAVES them from waiting in more traffic.